NEWFOUND FAMILY
Kenny (far right) and his son, Michael, connected as adults.
PHOTOS BY WADE PAYNEMy wife, Laurie, and I had just settled down to watch a movie in the living room when my phone buzzed.
A text message. Spam probably. I reached over to silence the phone.
“Hi,” said the text. That was all.
Weird, I thought. Was it someone I knew?
I clicked the message and a new screen popped up—the message must have contained a link. The screen showed an image of a tree, like a family tree. At the end of one branch was a name: Michael.
Under the name were four words: “This is your son.”
My son?
Laurie and I didn’t have kids. That was our decision when we got married more than two decades earlier. Laurie wanted to focus on her career, and I…well, let’s just say I didn’t con-sider myself good father material. I didn’t have kids from my disastrous first marriage either.
A strange nervousness came over me. I excused myself and took the phone into the bathroom. I realized the family tree was on the website of an ancestry and genetics company called 23andMe.
Maybe a dozen years ago, Laurie and I had submitted DNA samples to 23andMe